The New Civil Service: An excerpt from Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between

Most Afghans seemed to glide up the center of the lobby staircase
with their shawls trailing behind them like Venetian cloaks. But
these men wore Western jackets, walked quietly, and stayed close
to the banister. I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the hotel
manager.

"Follow them." He had never spoken to me before.

"I’m sorry, no," I said. "I am busy."

"Now. They are from the government."

I followed him to a room on a floor I didn’t know existed and he
told me to take off my shoes and enter alone in my socks. The two
men were seated on a heavy blackwood sofa, beside an aluminum spittoon.
They were still wearing their shoes. I smiled. They did not. The
lace curtains were drawn and there was no electricity in the city;
the room was dark.

"Chi kar mikonid?" (What are you doing?) asked
the man in the black suit and collarless Iranian shirt. I expected
him to stand and, in the normal way, shake hands and wish me peace.
He remained seated.

"Salaam aleikum" (Peace be with you), I said,
and sat down.

"Waleikum a­salaam. Chi kar mikonid?" he
repeated quietly, leaning back and running his fat manicured hand
along the purple velveteen arm of the sofa. His bouffant hair and
goatee were neatly trimmed. I was conscious of not having shaved
in eight weeks.

"I have explained what I am doing many times to His Excellency,
Yuzufi, in the Foreign Ministry," I said. "I was told
to meet him again now. I am late."

A pulse was beating strongly in my neck. I tried to breathe slowly.
Neither of us spoke. After a little while, I looked away.

The thinner man drew out a small new radio, said something into
it, and straightened his stiff jacket over his traditional shirt.
I didn’t need to see the shoulder holster. I had already guessed
they were members of the Security Service. They did not care what
I said or what I thought of them. They had watched people through
hidden cameras in bedrooms, in torture cells, and on execution grounds.
They knew that, however I presented myself, I could be reduced.
But why had they decided to question me? In the silence, I heard
a car reversing in the courtyard and then the first notes of the
call to prayer.

"Let’s go," said the man in the black suit. He told me
to walk in front. On the stairs, I passed a waiter to whom I had
spoken. He turned away. I was led to a small Japanese car parked
on the dirt forecourt. The car’s paint job was new and it had been
washed recently. They told me to sit in the back. There was nothing
in the pockets or on the floorboards. It looked as though the car
had just come from the factory. Without saying anything, they turned
onto the main boulevard.

It was January 2002. The American­led coalition was ending
its bombardment of the Tora Bora complex; Usama Bin Laden and Mullah
Mohammed Omar had escaped; operations in Gardez were beginning.
The new government taking over from the Taliban had been in place
for two weeks. The laws banning television and female education
had been dropped; political prisoners had been released; refugees
were returning home; some women were coming out without veils. The
UN and the U.S. military were running the basic infrastructure and
food supplies. There was no frontier guard and I had entered the
country without a visa. The Afghan government seemed to me hardly
to exist. Yet these men were apparently well established.

The car turned into the Foreign Ministry, and the gate guards saluted
and stood back. As I climbed the stairs, I felt that I was moving
unnaturally quickly and that the men had noticed this. A secretary
showed us into Mr. Yuzufi’s office without knocking. For a moment
Yuzufi stared at us from behind his desk. Then he stood, straightened
his baggy pin­striped jacket, and showed the men to the most
senior position in the room. They walked slowly on the linoleum
flooring, looking at the furniture Yuzufi had managed to assemble
since he had inherited an empty office: the splintered desk, the
four mismatched filing cabinets in different shades of olive green,
and the stove, which made the room smell strongly of gasoline.

The week I had known Yuzufi comprised half his career in the Foreign
Ministry. A fortnight earlier he had been in Pakistan. The day before
he had given me tea and a boiled sweet, told me he admired my journey,
laughed at a photograph of my father in a kilt, and discussed Persian
poetry. This time he did not greet me but instead sat in a chair
facing me and asked, "What has happened?"

Before I could reply, the man with the goatee cut in. "What
is this foreigner doing here?"

"These men are from the Security Service," said Yuzufi.

I nodded. I noticed that Yuzufi had clasped his hands together
and that his hands, like mine, were trembling slightly.

"I will translate to make sure you understand what they are
asking," continued Yuzufi. "Tell them your intentions.
Exactly as you told me."

I looked into the eyes of the man on my left. "I am planning
to walk across Afghanistan. From Herat to Kabul. On foot."
I was not breathing deeply enough to complete my phrases. I was
surprised they didn’t interrupt. "I am following in the footsteps
of Babur, the first emperor of Mughal India. I want to get away
from the roads. Journalists, aid workers, and tourists mostly travel
by car, but I –"

"There are no tourists," said the man in the stiff jacket,
who had not yet spoken. "You are the first tourist in Afghanistan.
It is mid­winter — there are three meters of snow on the high
passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I can
guarantee. Do you want to die?"

"Thank you very much for your advice. I note those three points."
I guessed from his tone that such advice was intended as an order.
"But I have spoken to the Cabinet," I said, misrepresenting
a brief meeting with the young secretary to the Minister of Social
Welfare. "I must do this journey."

"Do it in a year’s time," said the man in the black suit.

He had taken from Yuzufi the tattered evidence of my walk across
South Asia and was examining it: the clipping from the newspaper
in western Nepal, "Mr. Stewart is a pilgrim for peace";
the letter from the Conservator, Second Circle, Forestry Department,
Himachal Pradesh, India, "Mr. Stewart, a Scot, is interested
in the environment"; from a District Officer in the Punjab
and a Secretary of the Interior in a Himalayan state and a Chief
Engineer of the Pakistan Department of Irrigation requesting "All
Executive Engineers (XENs) on the Lower Bari Doab to assist Mr.
Stewart, who will be undertaking a journey on foot to research the
history of the canal system."

"I have explained this," I added, "to His Excellency
the Emir’s son, the Minister of Social Welfare, when he also gave
me a letter of introduction."

"From His Excellency Mir Wais?"

"Here." I handed over the sheet of letterhead paper I
had received from the Minister’s secretary. "Mr. Stewart is
a medieval antiquary interested in the anthropology of Herat."

"But it is not signed."

"Mr. Yuzufi lost the signed copy."

Yuzufi, who was staring at the ground, nodded slightly.

The two men talked together for a few minutes. I did not try to
follow what they were saying. I noticed, however, that they were
using Iranian — not Afghan — Persian. This and their clothes and
their manner made me think they had spent a great deal of time with
the Iranian intelligence services. I had been questioned by the
Iranians, who seemed to suspect me of being a spy. I did not want
to be questioned by them again.

The man in the stiff jacket said, "We will allow him to walk
to Chaghcharan. But our gunmen will accompany him all the way."
Chaghcharan was halfway between Herat and Kabul and about a fortnight
into my journey.

The villagers with whom I was hoping to stay would be terrified
by a secret police escort. This was presumably the point. But why
were they letting me do the journey at all when they could expel
me? I wondered if they were looking for money. "Thank you so
much for your concern for my security," I said, "but I
am quite happy to take the risk. I have walked alone across the
other Asian countries without any problems."

"You will take the escort," said Yuzufi, interrupting
for the first time. "That is nonnegotiable."

"But I have introductions to the local commanders. I will
be much safer with them than with Heratis."

"You will go with our men," he repeated.

"I cannot afford to pay for an escort. I have no money."

"We were not expecting any money," said the man in the
stiff jacket.

"This is nonnegotiable," repeated Yuzufi. His broad knee
was now jigging up and down. "If you refuse this you will be
expelled from the country. They want to know how many of their gunmen
you are taking."

"If it is compulsory, one."

"Two . . . with weapons," said the man in the dark suit,
"and you will leave tomorrow."

The two men stood up and left the room. They said good­bye
to Yuzufi but not to me.

Excerpt from the book The Places in Between by Rory Stewart,
Published by Harcourt; May 2006; $14.00US; 0-15-603156-6